Jesus Christ Superstar
Jul. 22nd, 2013 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meteordustThis musical has been on my 'to watch' list for ages now. (I still envy the lucky folks who got to see the iconic Australian production from the 1990s, with John Farnham as Jesus, Jon Stevens as Judas, and Kate Ceberano as Mary Magdalene.) So when the Arena Tour was announced for Sydney, I was over the moon.
Rock opera in a stadium of thousands - of course I loved it. I knew nothing about Ben Forster, but he has the chops to play Jesus. His 'Gethsemane' was a showstopper. Mel C's 'I Don't Know How To Love Him' was another standout performance. Tim Minchin was a very creditable Judas. And it was fantastic to see Jon Stevens return, this time as Pontius Pilate. He stole every scene he was in.
I want to talk a bit about the contemporary update this production got. The opening was electrifying: protest marches and tent cities, riot police with batons and shields, Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent. Potent imagery ran through the musical: giant banners bearing the face of Jesus and proclaiming 'BELIEVE', messages flying between his followers on the #FollowTheTwelve hashtag, Romans in suits monitoring the populace over CCTV.
But.
In the traditional staging, set in Jerusalem in ancient times, the anachronistic allusions create an interesting resonance. Like the mob after Jesus's arrest behaving like modern day paparazzi, or King Herod performing like a modern day talk show host. But when you change the setting to today, and the mob is literally paparazzi, and Herod is literally a talk show host, does that explicit portrayal diminish the power of suggestion?
I wasn't sure, until the song 'Superstar', when Judas sings, "If you'd come today, you'd have reached a whole nation/Israel in 4BC had no mass communication." That made me go, "Wait, you did set this today. And you've been using mass communication all along." So that line did lose its punch. I guess you can't have your metaphor and eat it too.
Rock opera in a stadium of thousands - of course I loved it. I knew nothing about Ben Forster, but he has the chops to play Jesus. His 'Gethsemane' was a showstopper. Mel C's 'I Don't Know How To Love Him' was another standout performance. Tim Minchin was a very creditable Judas. And it was fantastic to see Jon Stevens return, this time as Pontius Pilate. He stole every scene he was in.
I want to talk a bit about the contemporary update this production got. The opening was electrifying: protest marches and tent cities, riot police with batons and shields, Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent. Potent imagery ran through the musical: giant banners bearing the face of Jesus and proclaiming 'BELIEVE', messages flying between his followers on the #FollowTheTwelve hashtag, Romans in suits monitoring the populace over CCTV.
But.
In the traditional staging, set in Jerusalem in ancient times, the anachronistic allusions create an interesting resonance. Like the mob after Jesus's arrest behaving like modern day paparazzi, or King Herod performing like a modern day talk show host. But when you change the setting to today, and the mob is literally paparazzi, and Herod is literally a talk show host, does that explicit portrayal diminish the power of suggestion?
I wasn't sure, until the song 'Superstar', when Judas sings, "If you'd come today, you'd have reached a whole nation/Israel in 4BC had no mass communication." That made me go, "Wait, you did set this today. And you've been using mass communication all along." So that line did lose its punch. I guess you can't have your metaphor and eat it too.
